


Once We're Done Monster Hunting

by falafelfiction



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falafelfiction/pseuds/falafelfiction
Summary: "If you see a little girl in a pink dress with shaved hair…do not approach her. Stay well away."A series of missing scenes set during the night that Will Byers is rescued and Eleven vanishes without a trace.





	1. Mike

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been reading a lot of good takes on the aftermath of the S2 finale action with some great missing scenes fics filling in how the different character groupings might have reunited with each other once the monsters were defeated. Then I got inspired to write a similar type of fic only have it be about the aftermath of the S1 finale action instead. My plan is for this fic to be comprised of seven one-shots all set on that one night and all interweaving. Each chapter will have a different POV character, starting with Mike, then Hopper, Steve, Joyce, Nancy, Dustin and finally Eleven. Also, I'd love to read other immediate aftermath fics for the S1 finale if anyone has any recs. I wasn't following ST fanfic at that time.

He punches the dark crater in the chalkboard.

“El!” he screams. “El, where are you?!”

“Mike...” says Dustin, shifting nervously at his side. “Mike, that’s just a wall. She’s not _in_ the wall.”

“It’s another portal. It’s got to be!” He keeps on hitting. “She can’t just disappear...EL!”

The next punch really hurts his hand. He yelps as his knuckles sing out in pain. Mike just swallows and raises his other fist.

Lucas moves in fast and yanks him away from the chalkboard.

“Mike, stop it! We’ve got to get out of here. _Now_!”

Lucas tries to hold his stare, but Mike’s eyes are shooting everywhere, scanning the floor and the ashes surrounding their feet.

That can’t be all that’s left of her. It _can’t_.

“I’m not leaving without her! She’s tired, she's sick…I have to get her _home_!”

“Mike please,” Dustin begs. “Please don’t go mental on us.”

“You heard what she said,” says Lucas. “She told you goodbye. She’s gone...”

“NO!” Mike screams throwing off his grasp. “No, that thing took her! It took her to the Vale of Shadows. It took her to the Upside Down!” Mike spins and starts around wildly. “I just have to find a doorway to reach her. I have to find another gate, a tear in the…”

He realizes. The tear in the hall. The rip where the monster got through.

Mike rushes towards the fallen door. Lucas and Dustin grab him before he can reach it.

“We are not going back out there!” Lucas yells in his ear, pulling him away. “The bad men are still out there. And whether they’re alive or dead, I don’t want to see them again! And we don’t know what else might come through that hole in the wall.”

“Oh Jesus, I think I’m going to puke,” Dustin moans in his other ear.

“She saved us, Mike,” Lucas says softly. “El saved us. We can’t let it be for nothing.”

Mike looks at Lucas then. He sees that he’s crying too. They all are. El did this for them and he knows Lucas is right. She’d want them to go. But Mike can hardly think straight. His head is still pounding from where it struck the equipment cupboard after El tossed him back in the air. She wouldn’t even let him _try_ to help her. She knew he couldn’t do it. Only she could save them.

“We go back to the Byers house,” says Lucas. “We wait there till someone comes.”

Dustin nods frantically, seconding this plan. Mike says nothing, already outvoted. So Lucas takes charge of the mission, crossing the science room, yanking up the blinds and pulling open one of the windows. He swings one leg outside its ledge and waves for them to follow him. Dustin struggles over the sill and Mike gives him a boost to help him through. He’s just about to climb out after his friends when he hears her.

He spins around, his heart thundering.

He’s _so sure_ he hears her. She’s screaming, crying out his name.

“Come on!” Lucas is screaming now too. “We gotta go!”

He locks stares with Lucas again. His friend’s eyes go wide, suddenly realizing his mistake in leaving Mike to climb through the window last. Mike moves the fastest, slamming down the window and latching it closed before they can stop him. Lucas and Dustin bang on its frame, their breath fogging up the glass. They beg him not to do this. Mike mouths the word _‘sorry’_ to them.

Then he runs back into the hall.

The lights are still flickering like crazy out in the corridors. The back of Mike's skull is still throbbing in time with the flashes. His legs weave and stagger as he paws the wall for support. He tries to listen, but he can’t hear her anymore. Were his ears playing tricks? There are no sounds at all to be heard in his school. No more gunshots or monster growls. Nobody but him even breathing anymore.

Mike turns into the hall that he always uses to walk to Mr Clarke's class. Now it’s full of corpses with blood dripping from their dead eyes, puddling the floors. He stares at the bodies of the bad men and he feels his world suddenly tilting and turning colder. He didn’t really see them before. He was too focused on El. He needs to keep focusing on her now. Mike snaps his neck up, squinting at the far wall. That was where it came from. So that’s where he has to go. He remembers Nancy telling him about that tree portal she found in the woods. How she only slipped through it for a few moments before Jonathan came and pulled her back. If he can just reach the tear, maybe he can pull El back too?

Either that or he can go in there after her...

At that moment Mike hears footsteps pounding up behind him. He doesn’t dare look back, just breaks into a run. He makes it only another three steps before he trips over one of the many dead bodies. His hands slap down on the slippery red floor. He tries to stand again, but all he can do is stare numbly at his blood-stained palms and pant for breath.

A rough hand seizes his jacket. Suddenly there’s a tall man in uniform standing over him. 

“Where is she?” the man barks. “Where’s the girl?!”

Mike just sets his jaw and shakes his head. He’ll never tell them.

The man releases him with a shove and moves on. There’s more heavy footsteps then. More men with guns filling the corridor. Reinforcements flooding in fast. Mike scrambles back, huddling close to the wall, staring up at them all. The men are working fast, scooping up bodies and loading them onto stretchers. There’s cries of _‘Clean it up! Clean it up fast!’_ The noise, the smell of blood and the flicker of the lights are suddenly overwhelming. Mike squeezes his eyes closed. He wishes that the wall would open up and swallow him into another dimension. He doesn’t think that it could be any darker or scarier than the one that he’s in right now.

“And someone get that kid out of here!” he hears one of the voices ordering.

A strong arm loops around Mike's waist, hoisting him up and off his feet. He kicks and struggles but knows it’s no use. Knows he can’t possibly fight them. He knows there’s no El here to kill bad men, flip their vans or make him fly. Mike listens, straining his ears, but he can’t hear her anymore either. He can’t see a thing through his tears.

She’s not gone though. _She can’t be gone._

But in that moment it sure feels like he’s lost her.


	2. Hopper

He watches Joyce rush after the gurney, but doesn’t follow.

He doesn’t follow as the doctors wheel her son into the hospital wing of the lab. Hopper won’t be waiting by Will’s bedside with his mother. He won’t be intruding any longer on the personal miracle she’s experiencing. He won’t accept her thanks or allow himself to feel like any kind of hero. The kid’s alive, that’s all he needs to know. Now he has to worry about those other kids that he sold out and put in danger. The kids he left at the school.

He’s got to get out of this fucking lab. After stripping off his hazmat suit, Hopper puts his Sheriff's hat back on his head, hoping that it'll lend him some air of authority. He walks briskly towards the nearest exit, acting like he doesn't need an escort, even though he can already hear those creepy lab suits following fast at his heels. When he reaches the main doors, he turns to face them, his fists clenched at his sides, daring them to stop him.

"I've got to get out there," Hopper tells the suits. "I’ve got to check on my town. Make sure no more of our residents have been eaten by the monsters you let out."

He’s already so close to punching these bastards. They’ve just forced him to relive the worst day of his life, the day that he lost his little girl to the black hole. He’s not planning on losing any more kids tonight, so these assholes best stay out of his way.

To his surprise, the suits only nod. No guns are drawn.

"Of course," says the tallest of the suits, motioning Hopper to the door, walking alongside him. "We want you out there too. There's a job we need you to do for us."

He snorts in disgust. "What – you think I work for you now?"

"We think it's in your best interests to cooperate with us,” says the suit. “And we need you to ensure that anyone else involved in this holds the same opinion."

Hopper frowns, already not liking this. "Anyone else involved?"

"Anyone who knows about the girl or the creature that she unleashed," the suit elaborates. "Anyone who knows the truth about where the lost Byers boy has really been all week. Anyone who is a witness to this business needs to be brought here. _Tonight_."

"Brought here?” He bristles. "For what?"

"For the sake of confidentiality. We'll need them to sign non-disclosure contracts. If they can all agree to our terms then…then no action will be taken against them. They will be free to return to their homes and go on with their lives. That’s the deal you wanted, wasn’t it Sheriff? We’re going to forget that any of this ever happened.”

Hopper narrows his eyes, not trusting them one inch.

“So what…you want me to round up all witnesses and bring them here to your cells? And what’s to stop you faking suicides and accidental deaths for us all?” He swallows, trying not to sound as desperate as he feels. “You know most of them are kids, right?”

The suit nods. “Don’t worry. None of us want any more missing children in this town.”

He eyeballs them a little longer, then slowly nods back. He believes that much at least. If any more local kids disappear in Hawkins then this thing would quickly turn into a national shit-storm that’d bring all the world's media and conspiracy theorists sniffing around the town. There’s already going to be all kinds of questions raised about that fake corpse that they pulled out of the quarry and that poor Holland girl who’s never coming home. So yeah, they really don’t need any more missing kids anywhere near their lab.

"You know, we can always escort them here ourselves, Sheriff,” the suit tells him. “We just thought it would go easier if you went to them instead. Oh and just so you know...Mrs Byers and her son will not be permitted to leave this facility until we get all those signatures."

Hopper's fists clench again. As if that poor mother and her kid hadn’t been through enough. Now it looked like they were hostages. They still weren’t safe yet.

“Gimme a few hours,” he says. “I’ll bring them here.”

“Go to the Middle School first,” instructs the suit. "We’re getting reports of an incident there. Your deputies will be wondering where you are.”

Hopper has to struggle not to flinch. “At...at the school? What kind of incident?”

“The kind that’s left us with multiple causalities and calls for reinforcements. The kind we need to clean up and cover up fast. Get over there.”

Hopper is already backing out the door, his keys in his hand. As he gets behind the wheel, he’s already fearing the worst. If anything has happened to those kids, if any of them are hurt or dead at that school, then…then that’s on him. _Shit_ , why did he think he could trust Brenner to keep his word? He doesn’t trust that snake of a man one bit. But he had to make a judgement call. The only thing he’d known for sure was that if he and Joyce hadn’t got through the portal when they did, Will would surely be dead by now. The kids location was the only thing he'd had to bargain with.

So he’d given Brenner their location. And since then Hopper's had worst-case scenarios playing out in the back of his mind. The very worst being bullets to the head like Benny had got. But he’d gone with his gut. He’d trusted that the worst Brenner would do was grab the kids and haul them down to the lab. He’d trusted that they’d at least be taken alive. Which was better than what that creature had planned for Will.

He knows Brenner wants his little science experiment brought back alive, that's for sure. He can tell the girl is valuable to him. That scrawny little girl who can break arms with her mind. As he drives, Hopper begins to wonder…could the girl have used her powers to fight back? Could she be the cause of the causalities at the school? If she really is that powerful then Hopper hopes that she’s slaughtered every last one of those psychotic creeps that he sent after her. He hopes there’s still a chance that her and those boys might've gotten away.

Hopper arrives at Hawkins Middle to find it surrounded by army jeeps, cop cars and ambulances. State troopers are marching in and out of the building carrying stretchers covered in white sheets. Lines of body bags are laid out in the parking lot. He gets out of his truck, looking around frantically for someone he knows. He listens…

…somewhere he can hear a kid yelling his head off.

Hopper turns and hurries over to the double doors leading into the school gym. It’s there that he sees the Wheeler boy struggling with a soldier about twice his size, lashing out with his puny fists as the man holds him roughly by the collar at arm's length.

“Hey, get your hands off him!” Hopper barks. “I know that kid, alright. He’s just a local kid. Let him go!”

Hopper takes Mike’s arm and tugs him away from the soldier. The guard seems happy to hand Mike over to be someone else’s problem. He heads back into the main building and Mike jerks after him, like he wants to follow the soldier back inside.

Hopper keeps a firm grip on his elbow, shaking him to get his attention.

“Hey, what the hell happened in there?” he demands.

The kid stares at him, trembling all over. It takes him a moment to answer.

“Bad men…” he says at last in a small voice. “They found us...somehow they found us…”

 _Somehow_ , thinks Hopper, wincing. The kid doesn’t even suspect him.

“Yeah...yeah, I see that. Where are your friends? Your sister?”

“I…I don’t know,” Mike stammers. “Not here...they left.”

“Okay, what about the girl? Where’s the girl?” Hopper points to the body bags laying in the parking lot. “Did she do this?”

He feels the kid shudder as he looks at the bags. “It wasn’t just her.”

“What do you mean? _What_ else?”

“The Demogorgon...” he says, quieter still, like he’s afraid it might hear him. “It was here. It…it took her.” Mike’s face creases up, his eyes swimming with tears. “It took her after I promised her it would all be okay. I _promised_ her…”

The kid’s legs give up then, buckling at the knees. Hopper catches him as he sinks to the ground. Mike grasps at the sleeves of his jacket, leaving stains there. Hopper realizes that the boy’s hands are smeared with something wet and red.

“Oh, Jesus...." Hopper gasps. "Kid, is that your blood? Are you hurt?”

Mike shakes his head but Hopper still hollers for a medic. Even if the kid isn’t bleeding, he’s still in shock and he needs to be checked out. A couple of scrubs rush over with a blanket and they lead the kid over to a nearby ambulance. Hopper is following them when a nervous hand taps his shoulder. He turns to see Powell and Callahan, both of them wide-eyed as rabbits staring down a shotgun.

“Chief!” says Powell. “Where the hell you been? We’ve got a full-blown bloodbath on our hands here! In _Hawkins_ …”

“I’ve been busy, that's where I've been,” Hopper snaps at them. “I’m still busy now. There’s people I’ve got to find...people involved in this...” He's about to push past them but thinks better of it. He points to the ambulance where Mike’s being looked over. "One of you call that kid’s parents. And tell the Wheelers I’ll be coming over to their house later on tonight.”

Callahan opens his mouth, looking ready to babble out a dozen questions, but Hopper holds up his hand to silence him.

“Do a sweep around the school. There may be some other kids still lurking around the perimeter. Two boys the same age as that one and two teenagers with them.”

His deputies still look thoroughly confused, but they nod at his order and take out their flashlights.

“Oh and guys,” says Hopper. “If either of you sees a little girl in a pink dress with shaved hair…do _not_ approach her. You hear me? Stay well away.”

Hopper turns his back before they can say anything and heads for his truck, glancing one last time at the body bags as he goes. The girl may be lost somewhere in that shadow dimension now. But he’s not taking any chances. If she finds a way out then that girl would be like a little nuclear bomb walking around his town and who knows when she might go off again. The girl scares Hopper, seriously scares him. And not just because of the things she can do, but because nothing has ever frightened him more than a little girl with no hair in grave danger.

He winces, his heart clenching. Eleven is about the same age as Sara would’ve been if she’d lived. She may be lost to the black hole now too. And if she is, then it’s Hopper’s fault. But he senses that this girl stands a good chance of fighting her way free. If she does get free, he’ll need to find her before those lab suits do. He’ll need to hide her from them.

He owes her that much. _Christ_ , after everything she’s done and everything he’s made her do tonight...

...Hopper owes that little girl more than he could ever give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read Mike's chapter, especially those who subscribed or left comments. Steve's chapter is coming up next. That should be more of a fun one. Poor exasperated Steve.


	3. Steve

Steve sits on the couch holding the nail bat, wringing it in his hands.

Jonathan and Nancy are both on their feet, pacing the living room and arguing over what to do next. Steve can scarcely take in what they’re saying. His head is pounding as he struggles to process everything that he’s seen in the last hour. He hopes they don't notice that he's near tears and can’t seem to stop trembling. It’s so cold in the creaky wooden shack of the Byers house. There’s holes in the wall, dark stains on the rug and the twitchy Christmas lights are still flickering. The air around them reeks of burnt flesh and gasoline.

Steve reminds himself that he doesn’t have to be here now. He could get in his car and drive back to his parent’s big house with its fourteen rooms and its heated swimming pool. But he hasn’t been home since his fight with Jonathan. He hasn’t wanted to explain the bruises on his face to his mom. So he’d come here instead. To make peace or to challenge his rival to a rematch…he’s not even sure anymore. But he didn’t come for this. Whatever _this_ is, whatever just happened in this house…it’s not something he can handle.

“Steve!” yells Nancy, breaking into his thoughts. “Steve, would you tell him?”

He blinks, raising his head. Nance is staring at him expectantly, wanting him to settle the row that she’s been having with her _other_ boyfriend for the last ten minutes or so. Steve can hardly wrap his brain around the things that they’ve been fighting over. But he tries to reason it out.

“Okay, let me get this straight…” He pinches his temples. “Jonathan wants to go to the Hawkins lab to look for his kid brother who’s not actually dead but who's been trapped in an alternate dimension all week where he’s been hunted by that thing we just set on fire.”

“Yes,” Nancy and Jonathan say in unison.

“Right, so far so crazy…” Steve takes a breath to calm himself. “And Nancy you want to go to Hawkins Middle School where your kid brother and his friends are hiding out because Mike’s wanted by some shady secret division of the federal government.”

“Yes,” Nancy says again. “They’ve had choppers looking for him and everything.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m just glad I’m an only child.”

“Steve, this is serious!” Nancy snaps at him.

“What do the feds want with your brother exactly?”

“You…you don’t need to know that.”

“Well Nance, I’ve already found out about the big scary monster from a hidden shadow world, so I think my innocence is pretty much shattered at this point. Things can’t really get any stranger for me, okay?”

“Look, there’s no time to explain!” says Nancy. “We need to get back to the school. We shouldn’t have left them alone for so long.”

“Nobody knows where they are,” Jonathan argues back. “I’m sorry but I can’t go back to babysit them while my entire family is trapped in that place. It’s not just my brother in there now, Nancy. My mom’s gone in after him. I know it. I could feel her in the lights.”

Steve squints at him. “You could _feel_ your mom…in the lights? Okay, that sounds certifiable...”

“Shut up!” Jonathan and Nancy snap at him in mutual irritation.

“Hey, hey…in case you haven’t noticed I’m here trying to help, you assholes!”

They both continue to glare at him. At the start of this week, Steve would never have thought it was possible to feel this intimidated by Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler. But that was before Jonathan had beaten him to a pulp and Nancy had threatened to shoot him in the face. That was before Steve had learned that these two weren’t meeting up behind his back because Nancy was cheating on him, but because they were both secret monster hunters.

“Okay, so…you two both want to go to different places to look for your respective little brothers. We have two cars so…so why is this even an argument? Jonathan, you take your car to the lab. I’ll drive Nancy to the school. I mean, I’ll happily take babysitting over fighting any more of those shrieking mutant creatures.”

“No, we should stay together,” Nancy insists. “Jonathan, you promised the Chief you wouldn’t follow them to the lab! You’ll only wind up as bait too!”

Steve blinks. “Chief Hopper? He’s involved in this too?”

Jonathan cuts him off. “Nancy...we’ve already broken our promises by leaving the kids at the school. I’m sorry, I just…I can’t wait any longer. I need to find out if my family are okay. I need to do this like you needed to kill that thing.”

Nancy lets out a hiss of frustration. Then she hugs him. Their bloody bandaged hands cling to each other’s necks. Nancy pulls away, looking at Jonathan like she’s scared it’s the last time she’ll ever see him. Steve’s throat constricts with jealousy as he feels sure they are about to kiss. Instead Nancy whispers something in Jonathan’s ear. What she says Steve doesn’t hear, but Jonathan nods. Then he breaks away, rushing out the door.

Nancy takes a moment to wipe her eyes, then turns to Steve.

“Come on,” she says. “Bring your bat.”

Steve wasn't about to let it go anytime soon. He and Nancy step out of the house just in time to see Jonathan speeding out of the driveway. Steve finds that his hands are still shaking, his keys rattling against the car door as he jabs them into the lock. Nancy eyes him with concern.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” she asks.

“Well, I think I might be severely traumatized…” Steve concedes, as they get in the car. “But hey, there’s little fugitives who need us to protect them, right? I guess I’ll try to pull it together. How many kids did you say were at the school again?”

“Four,” says Nancy. “My brother, two of his friends and…and a girl.” She shoots him a nervous glance then continues. “It’s the girl who the feds are really after. She escaped from that lab. She’s like…one of their experiments. Mike found her in the woods. He’s been hiding her in our basement. And those people, those people who let that monster out, they want her back. They want her back so that they can cover this whole thing up. Like they tried to cover up Will going missing by planting that fake body in the quarry.”

Steve nods as Nancy talks, pretending to understand more than he really does. As he puts his car in gear and pulls out of the drive another thought occurs to him.

“Hey…” he says. “Do you think those lab people and their monster had something to do with Barb going missing too?”

Nancy gives him a sour look, looking like she wants to slap him again.

“Yes Steve…those people and their monster are exactly the reason why Barb is missing. Only she’s not really missing. She’s dead. They killed her.”

Steve flinches, turning to stare at her. “What?”

Nancy bites down on her lip, tears slipping from her eyes. Steve reaches out a hand to comfort her when she suddenly sits bolt upright in the passenger seat.

“LOOK OUT!” Nancy yells.

Steve turns just in time to see two kids running off the dirt track leading up to the Byers house. Running right into the road in front of him. He hits the breaks and screeches to a halt just inches away from them. The kids stand there bug-eyed and gasping in his headlights.

“Dustin?” says Nancy, getting out. “Lucas?”

Steve climbs out of the car too. He doesn’t recognize either of the boys who he’s almost smeared under his wheels. They look to be the same age as Nancy’s brother, one of them a skinny black boy with a camouflage bandana and the other a chubby kid with a mass of curls pressed down under a baseball cap.

“What are you doing here?” asks Nancy. She stares up the dirt path behind them, her eyes widening. “Where’s Mike?”

The two boys share a guilty look.

“He's still at the school,” says Lucas. “We couldn’t get him to leave. Then there were all these soldiers and state troopers surrounding the building. We would have gone back in for him, but there were too many of them…they were everywhere!”

“I still say we shouldn’t have left him...” Dustin mutters at Lucas’s side.

“We’d have been caught too! What good would that do?!”

“We should never break up the party! It all goes to shit when we split up...”

Nancy interrupts their bickering. “So wait, are you telling me that Mike’s been… _arrested_?”

Dustin huffs. “Yeah, he’s probably being charged with treason about now.”

“What about Eleven?” asks Nancy. “Where’s Eleven?”

The two friends share another one of their tense looks.

“We…we don’t know where she is,” says Lucas.

“She kind of vanished,” adds Dustin. “Like Will. Just… _gone_...”

"But it was El who saved us,” says Lucas, looking tearful.

Steve’s been standing back a few paces, taking this all in, not really making sense of it. He steps forward now into his headlights.

“I'm sorry, excuse me but…who the hell is Eleven?” he asks.

The two boys startle and whirl around to face him, noticing him for the first time.

“What is Steve Harrington doing here?!” yells Dustin, appalled.

“He came over,” says Nancy. “He knows what’s going on.”

Lucas throws up his arms in exasperation. “Why would you tell Steve Harrington what’s going on?!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” says Nancy. “He wouldn’t go away.”

“Hey, can you all stop talking about me like I’m some kind of liability,” Steve interrupts. “I’m being helpful here!”

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Where did Jonathan go?”

Nancy winces at the question. “To the lab. He went after his mom.”

“Oh my God, we should _not_ be breaking up the party like this…” Dustin mutters again. “We’ll all be disabled. We’re losing everyone here! The Chief, Mrs Byers, Jonathan, Mike, Eleven…”

“Who _is_ Eleven?” Steve asks again, a little louder this time, sick of being ignored.

“She’s the girl,” says Nancy. “She’s Mike’s girl...the one he's been hiding.” She turns to the boys again. “So wait...it was Eleven who helped you get away? She saved you from the lab people?”

“Not just from the lab people,” says Lucas.

“From the Demogorgan,” says Dustin. “It attacked us at the school.”

“Woah, woah, woah…that’s impossible,” says Steve. “You’re talking about that big gangling creature with the face that opens up, right?” He hikes a thumb at Nancy, pleased to have something to brag about. “We killed that thing. I hit it with my bat and then Jonathan set the sucker on fire.”

Dustin just looks at him, not remotely impressed. “You didn’t kill it enough.”

“Yeah, El had to finish the job,” adds Lucas.

Steve frowns, struggling to picture this. “Wait so, you’re telling me this girl, she…” His frown deepens. “How did a _little girl_ finish that thing off?”

Dustin shrugs. “She turned it to ash with her mind.”

Steve just…he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to respond to that. He decides to stay quiet and let the rest of them figure out what to do next.

It looks like things can still get a lot stranger after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers and commenters. Getting over to Joyce at the lab next!


	4. Joyce

As Will sleeps, Joyce rests her hand on his brow.

He’s still too cold, even with the radiators turned up in his windowless room and the warm intravenous fluids feeding into his arm on a drip. His skin still feels so icy and he looks so pale. But his breathing is steady and the lines on his heart monitor fall and rise in an even pattern. He’s alive. Will’s here and he’s alive. That’s what Joyce clings to as she’s strokes his face and knits her fingers into his hair. She needs to keep touching him to feel sure that he’s real. To feel certain that he won’t disappear again.

Will looks so tiny in the bed. He’s always been small for his age, but after a week trapped in that hellhole he’s thinner, frailer. It’s like he’s a new born again. The first time was tough enough. Will was premature and spent the first week of his life in an incubator, hooked up to feeding tubes, struggling to get his weight up. Looking at him now, Joyce is scared her boy hasn’t eaten during the time that he’s been lost. She’s even more scared of what he might have had to eat to survive. That any form of food from that place could be contaminating him and poisoning him still. The doctors pumped Will’s stomach after Joyce told them about that tentacle they'd found reaching down his throat. She can only pray they’ve got all the evil of that dark world out of him.

The door creaks behind her and she turns in her chair.

“Mom?” Jonathan walks shakily up to the bed, his face washed out and his eyes already filling. “Oh God, mom…is he okay? Are _you_ okay?”

Joyce rushes around the bed to hug Jonathan from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder so they can stare down at Will together. Jonathan presses one hand to his little brother’s head and clutches her hand in the other, squeezing it to his chest. Joyce can feel his heart pounding as the relief washes over him.

“He’s okay,” she tells him. “He’s going to be okay...”

They nod together, even though Joyce knows it’s a lie and suspects Jonathan does too. Will has come back to them alive, but he’s still so far from being okay. He might be _years_ away from being okay. But they’ll get through it. They’ll get him through it. Whatever it takes.

“The doctors say they'll need to monitor him for a few more days,” says Joyce. “And we might need to bring him in for check-ups for a while after that…but they expect that he’ll make a full recovery. They say that we should soon be able to take him home.”

Jonathan turns to face her. “Home? You sure about that mom?” He reaches a hand into his pocket and pulls out a folded document. “There’s men with guns guarding that door at the end of the hall. They searched me when I came in. They said that I wouldn’t be able to leave the lab unless I signed this. That they’ll keep us here if we don’t...”

Joyce nods. “Yeah…they told me the same thing.”

“What the hell, mom?!” he asks, holding up the contract. “What do they want us to sign exactly?”

She sighed, feeling sick to her stomach. “It…it’s a non-disclosure agreement. If they let us out of this lab, then they want us to lie for them. They want us to say that Will got lost in the woods. They want us to go along with their cover story that the coroner made a mistake when they identified the body in the quarry. They want us to keep that dark place a secret and pretend that their facility had nothing to do with Will going missing.”

Jonathan shakes his head in disgust. “How can they expect us to agree to that?”

Joyce feels the hot bile rising in her throat again. She swallows it down. 

“Oh sweetheart…” She clings to his shirt. “I already signed it.”

He blinks at her in disbelief. “You did what? _Mom_?!”

“I know, okay? _I know_!” She lets go of him and paces around the hospital room, tense as a caged animal. “You think I wanted to? You think I want to do a Goddamn thing to help those people? They left Will in that place to die, Jonathan! I’m not going to forget that and I’m never going to forgive, but…but we got him back. Hopper and me, we got him. And now I just want to get Will home...” She winces, her heart hardening. “If putting my name on their piece of paper is what it takes to get him home, then so be it.”

Jonathan still has the contract scrunched in his fist. He stares at Will lying cold and insensible in the bed. Then slowly he starts to nod.

“Right,” he says, gritting his teeth. “Right. I get it. We have to do what's best for Will.”

Joyce grabs a pen from the bedside table and holds it out to him. She won’t tell him just yet about the other things she’s agreed to. Like signing Will’s long term medical care over to the lab. Again, she had little choice. They’d never allow her to take him to a regular hospital and in all honesty, she wouldn't have been able to cover the cost of Will’s medical expenses even if she were allowed. The lab has told her they will monitor Will’s recovery free of charge. After all, they're the ones who know what's really wrong with him.

It's a deal with the devil for sure. But what else could she do?

“Just...just sign the damn thing,” she tells Jonathan. “Then show it to those guards at the door. They should let you out. If they do, then I want you to go back to the house and bring some stuff over for Will. Toys, books, his favorite music, some clean clothes, his coloring pencils and his sketch book. If we can’t take him home with us right away then I want him to have a little bit of home brought here. I just…I want him to feel normal again. I want him to feel that he's safe when he wakes up...”

Jonathan takes the pen, bowing his head and nodding.

“When we get Will home..." she goes on. "We are going to have to do _so much_ better. No more taking late shifts on the same night and leaving him alone in the house. No more letting him ride around on his bike after dark. We’ve got to keep a better watch over him, Jonathan. We’ve got to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to him again.”

Even as these words are spilling out of her, Joyce is dimly aware how much of a burden she's putting on her oldest son. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. It’s a bad habit that she’s gotten into ever since she kicked Lonnie out. Poor Jonathan is only four years older than Will but she expects him to be so much more than a big brother. She talks to him like he’s a co-parent. And it’s not fair on him. She knows it’s not fair and that she's forced him to grow up too fast. But he’s always accepted it. He’s always hung his head and nodded like he’s doing right now. And she’s never known what she would do without his support. She's come to depend on it. 

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

She takes his hand, squeezing it again. This time she notices him wincing. And it’s only then that Joyce realizes there is a bandage coiled around Jonathan’s palm.

“What…what happened to your hand?” she asks, startled.

“It’s nothing…” said Jonathan quickly recoiling.

She holds his stare. “If it’s nothing, tell me how you hurt it.”

He sighs, meeting her eyes. “It was something Nancy and me did. After you and the Chief left we…we went to the station and took back our weapons. Then we went up to the house and we set a trap to catch that thing. We wanted to kill it so that you’d have a clear path to save Will. So we…we used our blood to summon it.”

Joyce listens, wide-eyed. She should’ve realized. Her and Hopper had seen the trail of black blood that thing had left behind. She should’ve known who had injured it.

“ _You_ did that? It was you that made it bleed?”

Jonathan nods. “We burned it alive.”

Joyce knows she should tell him off. She knows she should shake him and yell at him for deliberately putting himself in danger. But there's only one word that escapes her mouth, a whisper cold as ice.

“ _Good_...” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, okay...not sure I quite captured Joyce there. She's a really difficult character to write for. Looking forward to tackling Nancy in the next chapter though...


	5. Nancy

Nancy hasn’t cared about her little brother in a long time. She hasn’t even thought about him.

For a while now, Mike has just been the annoying boy who lives in the same house as her. They pass each other in the halls, they bicker at the dinner table and besides that they just stay out of each other’s way. Which isn’t hard because Mike’s always down in the basement playing nerd games with his friends while she’s either studying in her bedroom or out trying to be the popular girl with a budding social life.

It hasn’t occurred to Nancy to care about her little brother till earlier in the week when he’d come running home from the quarry in floods of tears because he’d just seen what he _thought_ was his best friend’s corpse being pulled out of the water. Her heart had gone out to Mike then and not only because she’d being fearing for the loss of her own oldest friend on the very same day. No, it wasn’t just that. It was like Nancy had suddenly remembered the big sister she’d always wanted to be. The big sister she’d planned on being when Mike was just a baby and her four year old self had told their mom that she’d like to be the one who took care of him and taught him everything. Which is what she’d done till the novelty had worn off and she’d got bored of playing with him.

Now Nancy wonders who her brother has become while she hasn’t been paying him any attention. A boy who can hide a runaway girl in their basement. An under-aged fugitive wanted by the federal government. Jesus, he’s just a kid. He’s just her dorky kid brother. How had he managed to get into so much trouble?

“Nance?” says Steve, breaking into her thoughts. “Nance, what do you want to do?”

She shook herself, turning back to the car. “I…I have to get to the school. I have to find Mike.”

“We can’t go back there!” Lucas protests. “They’ll catch us too.”

“I don’t care! They can arrest me if they want to. I’m not leaving my brother alone with those creeps. I shouldn’t have left him at all…”

It’s only just hitting Nancy how much she’s been taking the people in her life for granted. People like her family and friends who she assumed would always be there. People like Barb. Those who she forgot to care about and who she didn’t think she needed to protect…because she never thought she could possibly lose them.

“Come on,” says Nancy. “All of you. Get in the car.”

They don’t argue. The kids pile into the backseat while Steve gets behind the wheel again. Nancy’s just marching around to the passenger side when she sees another car coming up the road towards the Byers house. A county Sheriff’s car...

Nancy squints. “Chief? Hey, it’s the Chief!”

Hopper’s vehicle screeches to a halt in front of them. He throws open the door, storming up to Nancy, not giving her the chance to speak first.

“What the hell are you doing up here?” Hopper barks. “You were told to stay at the school. What have you been up to? I’m assuming that it was you that broke into my station and stole back those traps and weapons?”

Nancy thrusts out her chin, holding her nerve against this bombardment from the Sheriff. She hears Steve and the kids rushing up behind her.

“Yeah, we took them!” she says. “And yes, we left the school. We came up to this house to finish what we’d started. We came here to kill it!”

Hopper looks her up and down, nodding as if he knew this already and was only seeking confirmation. “So it was you who wounded that thing, huh? That was a stupid risk to have taken, kid. But congrats…that little stunt may have saved Will’s life.”

“Will?” Lucas gasps behind her. “Will’s alive?”

“Yeah, we got him out,” Hop confirms. “He’s alive.”

A burst of laughter escapes Dustin’s mouth. He and Lucas throw their arms around each other, both giddy with relief. Nancy allows herself a smile too for the first time that day. But the smile stings her a little because now she can’t help thinking…if she’d have acted sooner, could they have saved Barb too? She’ll never know now.

“Where is he?” asks Lucas, elated. “Is he coming home?”

“Yeah, we need to see him,” Dustin insists.

“He’s still at the lab,” says Hopper. “His mom’s with him.”

“Jonathan went there too,” says Nancy. “He said that he couldn’t wait any longer.”

Hopper shrugs. “No matter. We all need to get over to the lab now.”

Dustin and Lucas gape at him, their eyes wide and appalled.

“What?” Lucas splutters. “You want us to go to the bad men’s lab?”

“That…that’s like the Millennium Falcon docking on the Death Star,” adds Dustin.

Hopper gives them a long hard look. “Your friend…” he stresses, “…is currently in the hospital wing of that lab. He’s being taken care of by their doctors. But they aren’t going to let Will go home unless we all get over there now and make a deal with them.”

Nancy frowns. “What kind of deal?”

“A deal to keep everything that we’ve seen a secret,” he says. “A deal that means you all get to go back to your lives and that nobody else gets hurt. All things considered it’s a pretty good deal. So we’re taking it. All of us.”

“Err, hey...does this mean I have to go too?”

This last question comes from Steve. Hopper blinks noticing him for the first time.

“Who’s this kid with the hair?!” Hopper says glowering.

“Steve Harrington,” Dustin says flatly. “He knows what’s going on.”

“But none of us told him on purpose,” Lucas hastens to add.

“He walked in on Jonathan and me when we were fighting that thing,” says Nancy.

“I…I hit it with a bat,” Steve adds, is if to justify his involvement.

Hopper just pinches his forehead. “Great. More witnesses. Just what we need...” He sighs and turns back to Steve. “Welcome to the party, kid. Do me a favor and drive these two over to the lab, would you?” He waves a finger at Dustin and Lucas. “And make sure you all call your parents when you get there. But only to say that Will’s been found and you’re waiting to see him. They don’t need to know anything more than that.”

“What about Mike?” asks Nancy, “He’s still at the school, right?”

Hopper shakes his head. “Your parents came and took him home. And there were about thirty feds who went with them. They’ll be at your house giving them a grilling right now.” He nods towards his car. “Come on. We’ve got to fetch them to the lab too.”

Lucas and Dustin try one last time to protest against going to the lab, right into the enemy’s lair, but Hopper sternly shuts them down. They split off into their separate cars. Nancy lets the Chief drive them in silence for a few minutes. There’s questions that she really needs to ask, but she’s hesitating, knowing that she won’t want to hear the answers.

“Is Mike okay?” she asks at last. “Did you talk to him?”

“Briefly, yeah…” says Hopper. “I didn’t get much sense out of him. The kid’s pretty shook up. He should be okay though…in the long run.”

She eyes him warily. “Should be?”

Hopper shrugs. “As much as any of us will be.” He glances across to her. “Hey listen, when we get to the house, you need to let your brother know his friend’s alive. I kinda didn’t get the chance to tell him before. Get Mike to focus on that if you can. Will’s been through hell and back in the last week. He’s going to need all the support he can get. You don’t want to know the state that we found him in.”

Nancy swallows. She still doesn’t want to ask, but she has to know.

“What about Barb? What state did you find her in?”

Hopper tenses for a moment, then he sighs. “What that girl told us was true. Your friend’s gone, Nancy. I’m sorry, but there was no saving her...”

She already knows, but it still hurts to hear it confirmed.

“Could…couldn’t you have brought her body back?” Her eyes fill with tears again. “Then her parents could bury her at least. _Oh God,_ her parents. They still think Barb ran away.”

She feels Hopper’s hard stare on her. “Those lab people don’t want any missing kids traced back to them. Barbara Holland ran away. That’s the story. That’s part of their deal…”

“Screw their deal!” Nancy snaps, unable to stop herself.

“Hey! You’ve got to think about your own family right now.”

Hopper says this just as they’re pulling into the cul-de-sac. Nancy blinks at the flashing blue lights of the dozen cop cars surrounding her house. Men in long trench coats are out on her lawn with their guns drawn, like they’re on patrol and guarding the house against intruders. Nancy can see the neighbors peeping through their curtains. Her mom is going to hate having to explain this to them. _Oh God_ , her parents...

“Get in there and tell them about Will,” Hopper instructs. “Tell them that I’m giving you all a ride to the lab’s medical center to see him. But don’t let your parents know that you’re as up to your neck in this business as Mike is. The less they know the better.”

She nods and they get out of the car. As they approach the house, the men in long coats come forwards to surround them. Nancy feels like she should be raising her hands.

“Don’t worry, I’ll run interference…” Hopper mutters to her. “She’s family! She’s their daughter!” he announces to the agents who are closing in around them.

Their faces remain blank and impassive, but they nod to let her through and refocus their attention on Hopper. Nancy hurries to the main entrance. Inside her house, there’s more armed agents posted in every doorway. There’s more that are bugging their phones. She finds her mom and dad standing nervously by the kitchen counter.

“Oh my God, Nancy!” her mom exclaims, pulling her into a hug that’s almost bruising in its intensity. “Where on earth have you been? Do you have any idea what’s been going on here?!”

Nancy schools her face into a look of innocent confusion. “What? I…I’ve been over at Ali’s house. We were studying and then she said I could stay for dinner. And then I guess we just got talking and I…I must have lost track of time.”

Her mom crosses her arms. “Oh really? You've been at Ali's house this whole time? And I suppose it’s just a coincidence that Steve Harrington’s father called here telling me that his son hasn’t been home all day either.”

Nancy shakes her head, brushing aside this implied accusation.

“Mom, what’s going on? Who are these people?”

Her mom bites her lip. “I…I don’t even know where to begin. Ted?”

Her dad sighs. “They say your brother’s been hiding a Russian spy in our basement,” he says in a mystified voice. “A _girl_ …” he adds, as if that’s the weirdest part.

“They came here looking for Michael this afternoon…” her mom goes on. “They just…invaded our home, turning it upside-down, looking for evidence. Holly wouldn’t stop crying. I’ve had to take her over to a sitters for the night. And these people…they told us Mike was in danger. They’ve been searching the town for him all day. They’ve only just found him at the school. They say this girl was with him, but she fled before they could apprehend her. They say she's _killed_ people. There were body bags outside the Middle School, Nancy!”

“Where is Mike now?” she asks, cutting through her mom’s distress.

“They’re still interviewing him through in the study,” says her mom, glancing reproachfully at the guards in the doorway. “I don’t know why it’s taking so long.”

“Well Karen,” says her dad. “Maybe if Michael showed willing to cooperate…”

“For Godsake, Ted! Did you not see how upset he was?” Her mom’s face flushes with rage. “That girl she…she manipulated him. She fed him lies, _cruel awful lies_ , to convince him to keep her a secret, getting him to harbor her in our house. She actually got the poor boy believing that Will was still alive and that she could help Mike to find him…”

“Will is still alive, mom,” says Nancy. “He’s been found, _alive_.”

Her mom blinks at her through bewildered tears.

“What? Nancy, what are you talking about? Will can’t possibly be…”

Nancy shakes her head and marches through the living room into the study. The guards at the door do not block her way. After hearing what she’s just said about Will they are looking startled themselves, reaching for their radios. Nancy gets to Mike. She finds her brother seated on a stool with two tall agents looming over him, firing questions down at him. Mike’s face is pale and his lips are pressed tightly together. He’s not looking at his interrogators. Instead he stares forlornly at the window, his eyes empty and lost.

“Mike!” She sinks to her knees in front of him, grasping him by the shoulders. “Mike, they found him. They’ve found Will. They’ve saved him. He’s safe, Mike…Will's alive and he's safe.”

She catches her breath, watching Mike as he gets the good news she's never going to get about her own lost friend. A light comes back into his broken stare, a dim little spark of hope. A gasp escapes his lips and his features twitch, almost smiling. For the second time that day, Nancy can’t help but pull her little brother into her arms, hugging him to her chest.

This time Mike actually hugs her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Nancy's chapter got long. Next one might be a little shorter. Getting to Dustin (or Dustin and Lucas) next.


	6. Dustin

“Are you seriously reading that whole thing?” asks Lucas.

Dustin raises his eyes from the twenty page document in his lap. The contract that the lab people had handed to Steve as the three of them had been escorted up to the hospital wing. Dustin had snatched the document out of Steve’s hands, taking charge of it. Steve hadn’t even wanted to look at the thing. The older boy had just slumped in a chair on the opposite side of the waiting room, pulling his Walkman over his ears and burying his face in his hands.

“Yes Lucas, I’m reading the whole damn thing,” says Dustin. “I’m reading it _one_ because those so-called doctors say it’ll be a few more hours until Will wakes up and I need to keep myself from falling asleep. I’m reading it _two_ because I don’t intend to sign any contract with these creepy lab people unless I know exactly what I’m agreeing to. Most of all I’m reading it because I know that the rest of you assholes aren’t going to read it properly so I have to make sure you aren’t signing your own death warrants.”

Lucas wrinkles his nose. “Death warrants?”

“Look at this part here…” Dustin points to a block of text on page seventeen. “It says here that _the undersigned accept that action may be taken against them if they disclose any of the classified information listed above to any outside party…_ They don’t actually say what kind of action will be taken. But you’ll notice that they don’t say _legal_ action.” He looks up at Lucas. “So you know what kind of action they mean, right?”

Dustin presses two of his fingers together and raises them like a gun to Lucas’s head just as Mike had done at the start of that week when explaining the danger surrounding El.

Lucas swats his hand down. “Look man, we know what this contract means, alright? It’s us agreeing to keep our mouths shut. It’s pretty obvious.”

“It’s still important to read the small print before we sign.”

“Yeah, but…do we even have a choice?” asks Lucas. “I mean the Chief said that the only way they would be letting Will out of this place is if we all promise to keep what happened to him a secret.” He winces. “And so we have to keep El a secret too.”

“And you think we should trust the Chief?”

Lucas frowns. “Well yeah…why the hell wouldn’t we?”

Dustin sighs. He knows his friends are smart but it pains him sometimes that they can be a lot slower to be smart than he is. He can’t believe he needs to explain this.

“Because the Chief turned Lando on us,” says Dustin.

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Oh, would you shut up about Lando!”

“No I won’t because it’s important!” Dustin snaps back. “How do you think those bad men found us at the school? Those guys parked up right outside the gym, okay. They knew exactly where to look for us. That means someone sold us out.”

“Yeah, but…the Chief?” says Lucas, still disbelieving.

“Think about it,” says Dustin. “This afternoon in the junkyard he punched three of those bad men out cold. Now he’s cutting deals and signing contracts with them? Now the lab people are just giving the Chief free access to their gateway into another dimension? That change would only happen if he’s given them something in return. And what they wanted was El...” Dustin shrugs. “It’s not like he had anything else to bargain with.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Lucas hisses, tensing up. “That’s right. The Chief’s a goddamn traitor!”

“Not necessarily,” says Dustin, not wanting Lucas to get in a temper.

He blinks in confusion. “How can you say that if he gave away our location?!”

“Maybe it was an impossible situation. Maybe he didn’t have a choice...”

“There’s always a choice,” Lucas sneers, still fuming. “He betrayed us!”

“What would you have chosen then?” Dustin asks calmly, turning to his friend. “I heard the doctors talking to Jonathan out in the hall. I heard them say that Will wasn’t even breathing when they found him. They say that the Chief had to give him CPR and that if they’d been even one minute late in getting to him then Will would’ve been dead…” Dustin shudders, hating to even think about it. “So if it came down to a choice between letting Will die or letting El get captured…then what would you have chosen?”

Lucas swallows his rage, finally understanding.

“Will,” he answers softly. “I’d save Will. And not because I don’t care about El, it’s just…”

“I know,” says Dustin, nodding. “I’d have chosen the same.”

Lucas holds his stare. “What do you think Mike would’ve chosen?”

Dustin shakes his head. Mike and Will have been friends the longest out of all their group, friends since their first day at Kindergarten. Dustin knows that there’s nothing that Mike wouldn’t do to save Will, but he knows that Mike would never have given up Eleven either. He knows it doesn’t matter to Mike that El is the newest member of their party, that she’s only been their friend for a week. Mike Wheeler doesn’t rank his friends. Dustin knows this now. They’re all equally people who Mike would do anything for.

“Mike…” he sighs. “Mike would jump off a cliff.”

Lucas squints at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” says Dustin. “I’ll tell you later.”

Dustin hasn’t told Lucas yet about what had happened at the quarry and not just because there hasn’t been time. It still scares him to even think about it…the knife at his throat, its sharp tip needling his gums, so close to stabbing at his small collection of teeth. Then how his stomach had dropped as he saw Mike step over the edge, falling so fast out of their view, before El had floated him up again, over their heads, and set him safely back on the path.

Dustin isn’t sure how long the three of them had stayed on that dirt road after Troy had fled. How long they'd been clinging to each other on the cliff edge, waiting until El had the strength to stand again. But in that moment Dustin had felt it. He’d felt the connection between Mike and El, the sense that they were more than friends now. Mike owed his life to the strange girl with the superpowers.

_“You want her, you’ll have to kill us first...”_

Dustin shudders again. He and Lucas had stood by Mike when he said it. He's their leader after all, their dungeon master and paladin. If Mike was prepared to sacrifice himself for Eleven then they all would’ve done it. And she’d proven that she’d do the same for them. _A friend is someone who you'd do anything for._ Dustin doesn’t know for sure if El... _died_ for them or not. But he figures wherever she is now, it's somewhere beyond their reach and rescue. They haven't any powers of their own they can use to find her.

It’s not that El’s loss doesn’t matter to him. He knows that neither he, nor Lucas will ever call her _‘the weirdo’_ again. She’s their friend now, a best friend who they already miss. But right now, they have to focus on the friend they just got back.

Lucas nudges him. “So…so what are we going to do?”

He nods to the contract in Dustin’s lap.

Dustin sighs, knowing there’s only one choice here.

“We do what’s best for Will,” he says.

He bows his head and he keeps on reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter coming up, which will be Eleven centric and will feature some early S2 spoilers.


	7. Eleven

El sits huddled in the hollow trunk of a fallen tree.

There’s a full moon up in the night sky that shimmers in the pool a little way down the slope. It’s the same pool that earlier that day El had shaken with a scream, sending her rage rippling over its surface in a sudden wave. The water is perfectly still now. The whole forest is still and quiet, except for the sound of El chewing on her last Eggo waffle. The four boxes she stole from the store litter the rotten log where she’s hiding. She knows she probably should have saved some for later, but after using her powers four times in one day she’s more drained than she’s ever been before. Like Dustin would say, she needed to recharge. She hadn’t even had the chance to try his pudding before the bad men came.

The waffle that El eats is no longer frozen like the ones she’d forced down that morning, but it’s not toasted and warm like when Mike made them for her. El thinks she’ll have to get used to cold meals from now on. Living out in the woods through the winter she’ll have to get used to frosty nights too. Papa always told her she wouldn’t feel the cold like normal kids. That she could survive in the freezing weather without getting sick from it. That she was so much stronger than other children her age. She was made to endure.

El swallows her last bite of Eggo, feeling her strength renewed. Then she lifts the dirty blonde wig in her hands, her pretty wig that she’d found where she left it by the water’s edge. She pulls the wig onto her head again, only this time she wears it backwards, the thick blonde strands hanging in a curtain over her face. The wig works as a blindfold while the chill air numbs her other senses.

So she doesn’t feel and doesn’t see. So she can find him...

El steps into the dark puddle of her dream circle and she searches for Mike. The first place she looks is the place that she saw him last. But she finds the Wheeler house is empty, neither Mike, nor his family, nor the bad men are still there. El starts to whimper, fearful of where they’ve taken him. She frantically searches the Byers house, the school gym and the railroad tracks, before she realizes where Mike must be. And she really doesn’t want to go there. She’s scared to go back even in her mind. But if Mike’s been taken to the lab then she has to go in after him. She has to see if he’s okay. She won’t sleep again till she knows.

Stepping in deeper, El sees three figures walking towards her. Three people who she knows but only vaguely. There’s the policeman who rescued them from the bus in the junkyard. She can’t remember his name, but his big burly shape would be hard to forget. Walking at the policeman’s side is a man and woman who El remembers seeing in the framed photos on Mike’s mantelpiece. His parents.

“Well, we already signed everything we were asked to back at the house…” Mike’s mom is saying. “Of course we understand that any information leaking out about this Russian girl would be a huge risk to national security. We tried to tell Mike that, but he wouldn’t listen to us. He…he’s still so upset and confused.”

“We’re hoping that you can talk some sense into him, Chief,” says Mike’s dad. “This has got to be the first time our son has even spoken to a girl besides his sisters. And whatever she’s told him it’s really screwed with his head.”

El realizes that they’re talking about her. She winces, remembering how Mike had said that once this was all over, that his parents would take care of her. That they would let her stay in their house, they would cook her food and make her a part of their family. Listening to them talk now El doesn’t think that can be true. They’re talking about El like she’s bad. Like she’s done bad things to Mike and they never want her anywhere near their son again.

The policeman nods. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him. His sister too. Wait out here a little longer, then you can take your kids home and start getting your lives back to normal.”

Mike’s parents nod, grateful to him and then turn away. El puts them out of her mind for now and follows the policeman as he moves further away. He’s walking down what she supposes is a corridor, though there are never any walls here in her dream circle, only the shapes of people and objects set against a dark veil. She follows the man into what she supposes is one of the labs many cells. In this cell, three boys are sitting together on a long bench before a table…

 _Her_ three boys. Her three friends. She’s found them.

Dustin and Lucas sit on either side of Mike, glancing at him nervously while Mike stares into his lap, avoiding their eyes. The boys aren’t the only ones in the room. Mike’s pretty sister is there too, pacing behind them. A tall boy with bruises on his face who El doesn’t know stands in a far corner, watching Mike’s sister with concern.

The policeman places his hands on the table, looking down at the three boys. El sees his eyes narrowing on Mike in particular.

“Okay…” he begins. “I know you’ve all been through a lot today. I know you must be tired. And I realize that you won’t have read through all of this…”

He taps his finger on a pile of papers in the middle of the table.

“Actually,” says Dustin. “I've read the entire thing.”

The policeman blinks at him, seeming perplexed and a little impressed.

“You did, huh? Well kid…care to summarize for the group?”

“I already did,” says Dustin. “They know what it means.”

“So you all understand what we’re signing up to?”

The policeman sweeps his eyes over all of them but Dustin and Lucas are the only ones who nod. The others are still looking away, dodging the policeman’s hard stare. El frowns at the document on the table. She doesn’t have to read its words to guess what it means. She can sense it. Written on those papers is a promise they all have to make. A promise they can never break...

Yes, she can sense it. They're promising to tell lies for the bad men. Promising to lie about what they've seen. To lie about her.

“Right,” says the policeman. “If you all know the score, let’s get this over with.”

The policeman flips the document to its final page where three people have already signed their names and five more dotted lines are still waiting. Dustin and Lucas look at Mike again, as if asking for his permission. Mike doesn’t move. His shoulders stay hunched and his head bowed.

The boy with the bruises is the first to step up to the table.

“Look Chief…honestly?” he says. “I still don’t understand half the things I’ve seen tonight. So I don’t know how I’d begin to explain what I’ve seen to anybody else. All I know is I’ve got to get home. I’ve got to think up some lie to tell my parents about what I’ve been doing.” He snorts. “Good thing there’s no chance of them guessing the truth…”

The boy signs his name, then he offers the pen to Mike’s sister.

She won’t take it. She crosses her arms, refusing to look at him.

“Nance, come on…” says the bruised boy. “This is what we need to do. This means that we get to walk away and pretend like none of this ever happened…that’s for the best, right? That means we can go on with our lives.” He pauses then adds. “Jonathan’s already signed it...”

El watches as Nancy gives the bruised boy a dirty look. The sort of look you’d give a Mouthbreather.

“What about Barb’s parents?” she asks. “Are they going to _get on with their lives_?”

“Eventually _yes_ …” the policeman says. “A runaway teenager goes missing for long enough and their parents will slowly start to accept that they’re not coming home…even if they never stop hoping.” He sighs. “I know it’s not right, kid…but there’s nothing that we could do to save that Holland girl. We have to focus on the kid who we can save here. We need to finish what we started and do everything we can to get Will Byers home.”

Lucas nods, swayed by this reasoning. He reaches for the pen.

“For Will…” Lucas says as he signs his name.

“For Will,” Dustin echoes, taking the pen in his turn.

It stings a little but El doesn’t blame them. They were Will’s friend long before they were hers. After both boys have signed they look to Mike again, clearly hoping he’ll follow their lead, just like all the times they’ve followed him. But Mike won’t take the pen. And when he finally raises his head, his stare is full of angry defiance.

“What if I can’t forget?” Mike asks.

“Come on, man," says Lucas. "We've all gotta sign it.”

“But I _can’t_!” Mike explodes. “I can’t just pretend that none of these things ever happened! I can’t lie about her or say that I never knew her. That she never saved my life! Even if it is all for Will, I just…I can’t. I won’t forget about her. I’ll never forget...”

Mike’s voice cracks and he quiets down, barely holding off tears. El’s eyes are filling too as she realizes Mike is trying so hard not to betray her. He made so many promises to her that night that he couldn’t keep. Promises about Snow Balls and having her own bed to sleep in. Promises that Mike can’t make a reality just by wishing. Now he’s just trying to hold firm to the first promise he ever taught her. _Friends don’t lie._

The policeman’s eyes flick between Mike and Nancy, his stare darkening.

“Those of you who’ve signed…” he says, "...go wait outside."

Mike’s friends nod again and rise to their feet. As they leave, Dustin reaches out a shaky hand and squeezes Mike’s shoulder. They step out the room and the boy with the bruises follows them after one last worried look at Mike’s sister. Nancy has halted her pacing and stands behind her brother, the same blazing look in her eyes.

Once they're alone, the policeman draws himself up to his full height. Which is tall, frighteningly tall. Even though El isn’t really in the room, she still takes a step back.

“Okay, listen up both of you…” he says his voice low and menacing. “I know you’ve lost people you care about tonight. I know you hate these bastards for what they’ve done and I know me asking you to sign this deal with them makes you sick to your stomachs. But I’m not asking anymore. I’m _telling_. You’re signing this thing right now. You two more than any of the others need to be smart about this. Because your house is destination number one where they’ll be expecting that little girl to show up. They’re going to be watching you. They are going to be listening in every day, waiting for that kid to make contact. And if while they’re watching either of you are stupid enough to make a stand against them and threaten their secrecy, then there won’t be any more talk of contracts. You’ll be dead. And not just you, but your parents and your baby sister too. They can make it happen. They can shoot you all in your beds and find some passing burglar to pin it on. That’s the kind of people they are. You can’t fight them. You just have to find a way to survive them. And this is it.”

Mike and Nancy listen to him, breathless and trembling. El feels shaken too. She knows exactly how this feels. She remembers all the ways she’s been forced to do things that she didn’t want to do in these cells. How in spite of the things she could do, those scientists could still make her feel so powerless. Papa’s voice was always softer than the voice that the policeman is using, but El senses that this man cares more than you’d think from his harsh words. Yes, the policeman must be a good man. He’s saying these things to keep Mike safe...

Mike still doesn’t move. He still seems so lost and his loyalties so torn. El steps over to the table and sits beside him on the bench. She tilts her head, pressing it gently to his shoulder, remembering how safe she’d felt sitting close to him in the gym.

 _“Mike…”_ she whispers. _“Sign it. You have to...”_

Mike flinches, jerking to his feet and stumbling back from the table.

“W-what the...” he stammers. “E-Eleven? Was that…”

“Mike, what is it?” asks Nancy. “What’s wrong?”

“I…I just felt something…” he insists, pressing a hand to the shoulder where El had laid her head. “I think it was her. I think she’s close…” He raises his hands, pressing them against something flat and unyielding. El can’t see for certain but she guesses that Mike is searching the walls for an opening. For a new portal into the Upside Down. “El? Was that you? Are you there? Please El just…”

“Hey, take it easy, kid,” says the policeman. “The doctors say you hit your head.”

“No! That’s not…I felt her just now! I know it.”

“Mike, you’re scaring me!” says Nancy. “Stop this! I...I need to get you home.”

With this resolve, Nancy steps up to the table and she signs her name. Without pausing, she marches up to her brother, seizing him by the wrist and pulling him till his hand hovers over the contract. Mike tenses up like a kid with a needle phobia about to have an injection forced on him. The policeman presses the pen between his fingers. Then he clamps his hand to Mike's shoulder, stooping down to look him in the eyes.

“I won’t ask you to forget, kid...” he says. “I’m just asking you to keep her a secret. Like you kept her a secret before. If she’s still out there then it’s the best thing you can do to protect her. The best way that you can protect your family and friends too.”

Mike swallows, defeated. He signs the contract. Two tears fall on the paper beside his name.

Nancy puts an arm around her brother and the policeman nods, giving them permission to leave. Once they’re out of the room, the man sinks down onto the bench himself and buries his head in his hands. And El sees then that he’s not the hard harsh person he pretends to be. He’s scared too. He's scared that even after they’ve signed it won’t be enough to keep them safe.

El reaches out a hand, wanting to press it to the policeman’s shoulder, wanting to comfort him too. Then at the last moment, she thinks better of it and she pulls her hand back. _They’re safer when I’m not here_ , she thinks. _I’m the threat to them. I’m the monster…_

With this thought, El lets herself slip back into the dark.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So with this final part, I was really trying to bridge the character development from S1 to S2. So we have a bit of control freak Hopper, a bit of lovesick emo Mike, a bit of Nancy beginning her 'Justice for Barb' quest and poor Eleven deciding that everyone would be better off if she just lived all alone in the woods. And the main inspiration for this fic was me wanting to explore that choice that all the characters must have made to sign confidentiality forms with the Hawkins lab and how each of them would've come to terms with that decision. Thanks to all readers who've stuck with this fic, especially those of you who've left lovely comments along the way.


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